Starting a new business is never an easy process. It’s about starting a journey full of possible barriers, inconveniences, and problems that require control and, above all, solutions. This is why starting up not only requires persistence, constancy, and effort, but also emotional intelligence.
A person determined to start a business, even above a difficult situation, omitting negative opinions about it and facing stress and anxiety, achieves better results based on productivity and performance.
What Is Emotional Intelligence?
This concept focuses on people’s ability to recognize, understand, and manage their emotions and those of others in the face of certain events, understanding how behavior, thoughts, or feelings influence the environment. This helps to improve interpersonal relationships.
Thinking that entrepreneurship is alien to emotional intelligence is a common mistake, as much as thinking that a good idea will be free of failures. Emotional intelligence is seen as the key to success in a venture. It is on the basis of the latter that the following aspects can be acquired:
Knowledge and Self-knowledge
These aspects are elementary within enterprise. Knowledge allows us to make decisions and generate appropriate changes within the company or business, while self-knowledge provides the confidence to know your limits, move forward, and work on them.
Self-Control
In this case, it focuses on keeping calm in situations that can alter the course of the business. This not only helps to better manage resources at a given time but also to convey this behavior to employees and not to create a stressful environment.
Optimism
Optimistic and empathetic behavior in every entrepreneur influences the image that employees have of him. It can be contagious and generate in the rest of the staff the necessary motivation to achieve productivity.
Assertive Communication
Emotional intelligence allows people to communicate their ideas in a clear and understandable way. Within the enterprise, the correct transmission of information is essential to generate trust with employees as well as with potential customers and investors.
A Profitable Concept
There are numerous studies that focus on the theory that a person with emotional intelligence excels in their productivity levels.
It is important, then, that entrepreneurs succeed in successfully combining hard skills (professional knowledge) with soft skills (aptitudes, qualities, personality traits) and apply them within the work team to achieve higher productivity and performance within it.
Do I Have Emotional Intelligence?
When talking about this term, it is common to ask whether or not we have emotional intelligence. Because it is an intangible element, its recognition is complex. However, these questions could define whether you lack emotional intelligence:
- Do you often feel overwhelmed by the situation in your business?
- Do you experience mood swings according to the situation?
- Do you feel that you are always right?
- Do you live in a constant state of tension?
- Do you blame others for your mistakes?
- Do you have problems relating to others?
If these questions were answered positively, you may still not be working on your emotional intelligence properly. It is necessary to improve these aspects if you want to start a business, where each one can determine its level of success.
Tips For IE-Based Entrepreneurs
Emotional intelligence is one of the aspects that differentiate a boss from a leader. The latter is able to identify his emotions and manage them appropriately. These tips can help you to work on your emotional intelligence if you are planning to start a business:
1. Don’t Fight Against Fear
When undertaking fear is a very common feeling. We usually tend to believe it’s bad. In many cases, fear acts as a persistent warning that allows us to act wisely.
It is advisable not to fight to stop feeling fear, nor to freeze for it. Using this feeling to work more slowly when undertaking can be very helpful.
2. Don’t Hide Your Emotions
The loss of an important client, the failure of a business, or the break-up of a partnership can be issues that significantly affect the working environment and therefore the staff. It can cause sadness and frustration, which, in many cases, we tend to pigeonhole inside ourselves, believing it to be an effective method.
Emotional intelligence refers to the adequate management of emotions, not hiding them. Crying in a moment of sadness is precisely the best way to relieve feelings and regain the courage and strength to get up and continue with the business.
3. Channel Your Feelings
When things go wrong, anger, stress, and anxiety tend to come up very often. And, although it is not a very pleasant feeling, turning a blind eye to this feeling is not healthy. Exercise, meditation, and yoga are some of the most recommended activities to channel anger, stress, or anxiety.
These feelings are common. Facing, working on them, and not letting them influence the work environment, instead of trying to hide them, is a clear example of emotional intelligence.
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